The Taliban's statement about a three-month ceasefire conditioned on the release of 7,000 prisoners and their exclusion from the UN "blacklist" is positive, the Special Representative of the Russian President for Afghanistan and Director of the Second Asian Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Zamir Kabulov told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
Tashkent is hosting the international conference "Central and South Asia: Regional Connectivity. Challenges and Opportunities" on July 15-16.
"Positive (statement - ed.), of course, if at least three months. Although we would prefer not a three-month, but a longer period of truce," Kabulov said on the sidelines of the conference, commenting on the statement.
Earlier the Afghan channel 1TV News quoted Nader Naderi, a negotiator of the radical Taliban movement, as saying that the Taliban would declare a three-month ceasefire on condition that 7 thousand prisoners would be released and would be removed from the UN "blacklist".
In Afghanistan, the confrontation between the government forces and fighters of the Taliban which have occupied large areas in the rural areas and launched an attack on large cities is going on. Instability in Afghanistan is increasing against the background of the US administration's promises to complete the withdrawal of troops from Afghan soil by September 11.
In 2020, Washington and Taliban officials signed the first peace agreement in more than 18 years of war in Doha. It provides for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan in 14 months and the start of an inter-Afghan dialogue after a prisoner exchange.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from RIA Novosti